Creston wrote on Jan 3, 2013, 11:52:The whole "Wattage" craze is ridiculous. Unless you're rocking SLI setups with two GTX690s (or the Radeon equivalent) that require two 6 pin connectors each, and have 9 drives running besides, you will never need more than 500/550 W in your PSU.

My current rig has a 500W PSU and it runs just fine. 2 SSDs, one data drive, one DVD drive, GTX660ti, i-2500K.

Creston

Well, it is an old one from my former Windows XP Pro. SP3 machine. I decided to get a new one since my old Debian/Linux's PSU was crap (Antec) -- making noises already within a year.

Yeah, it's true you usually don't need more than 500 watts, especially if you get a high-end PS. Also, newer procs on smaller processes use less power than before. But for cheap power supplies, the rating can be exaggerated, or with cheap components can lose its ability to handle higher wattages as it heats up. I picked up 800 or so b/c I was anticipating 8800 Ultras in SLI with an overclocked core 2 quad proc, which was 500 watts for those parts alone. I agree that you don't need it, but it's good to have overhead if you're planning on going SLI.

And don't forget that an 800 watt PS doesn't use any more power than a 500 watt PS with the same PC parts.

Creston wrote on Jan 3, 2013, 11:52:The whole "Wattage" craze is ridiculous. Unless you're rocking SLI setups with two GTX690s (or the Radeon equivalent) that require two 6 pin connectors each, and have 9 drives running besides, you will never need more than 500/550 W in your PSU.

My current rig has a 500W PSU and it runs just fine. 2 SSDs, one data drive, one DVD drive, GTX660ti, i-2500K.

Creston

Well, it is an old one from my former Windows XP Pro. SP3 machine. I decided to get a new one since my old Debian/Linux's PSU was crap (Antec) -- making noises already within a year.

The whole "Wattage" craze is ridiculous. Unless you're rocking SLI setups with two GTX690s (or the Radeon equivalent) that require two 6 pin connectors each, and have 9 drives running besides, you will never need more than 500/550 W in your PSU.

My current rig has a 500W PSU and it runs just fine. 2 SSDs, one data drive, one DVD drive, GTX660ti, i-2500K.

I'd suggest seeing if you can replace it with a Seasonic or something before it ships. OCZ is known for putting marketing and branding before QA and it shows in their often poor reliability.

My previous machine used an OCZ and it performed really well for me. For what it's worth, the one I ordered reviewed really well on Tom's Hardware and Hardware Secrets. But now that you jinxed me maybe I ought to order a Seasonic or Corsair as a backup for when the OCZ arrives DOA!

I'd suggest seeing if you can replace it with a Seasonic or something before it ships. OCZ is known for putting marketing and branding before QA and it shows in their often poor reliability.

My previous machine used an OCZ and it performed really well for me. For what it's worth, the one I ordered reviewed really well on Tom's Hardware and Hardware Secrets. But now that you jinxed me maybe I ought to order a Seasonic or Corsair as a backup for when the OCZ arrives DOA!

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” - Mahatma Gandhi

Prez wrote on Jan 2, 2013, 10:12:That artiicle on PC troubleshooting and repair is a timely addition as I have been suffering problems while gaming on my new PC. It more or less confirms what I have come to think is the problem. I suspect the power supply is "crowbarring" (I had to look up what my PC is doing to figure out what to call it) based on what I have to do to get the PC to boot again once it shuts down during a game. That's what I get for taking a chance on a Diablotek PS I guess.

Prez, never "take a chance" on a power supply. Seriously. I know a lot of people ignore it and will just go with any old Taiwanese knock-off 500W power supply, but it's really the one bit where you need to put down some money and get yourself a good unit. You'd be better off skimping on drives, or even your video card, than on your PSU. Imo.

Creston

Totally agree. Six years ago, I shelled out almost $200 for high-end Gigabyte 850 watt power supply. I rebuilt my machine over the summer with a core i5 and a GTX 670, and the system still runs rock solid. A high quality PS will cost you up front, but will last and last. This machine gets several hours of use daily. Most issues I've had with it have been software related, although my 8800 Ultra bit the dust after only three years, although given how clogged with dust it was, overheating was the obvious culprit.

The crazy thing is I know all this after having learned it the hard way a long time ago... and yet I still went with a middling brand. Duh!

Ordered an OCZ 800W today.

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” - Mahatma Gandhi

Prez wrote on Jan 2, 2013, 10:12:That artiicle on PC troubleshooting and repair is a timely addition as I have been suffering problems while gaming on my new PC. It more or less confirms what I have come to think is the problem. I suspect the power supply is "crowbarring" (I had to look up what my PC is doing to figure out what to call it) based on what I have to do to get the PC to boot again once it shuts down during a game. That's what I get for taking a chance on a Diablotek PS I guess.

Prez, never "take a chance" on a power supply. Seriously. I know a lot of people ignore it and will just go with any old Taiwanese knock-off 500W power supply, but it's really the one bit where you need to put down some money and get yourself a good unit. You'd be better off skimping on drives, or even your video card, than on your PSU. Imo.

Creston

Totally agree. Six years ago, I shelled out almost $200 for high-end Gigabyte 850 watt power supply. I rebuilt my machine over the summer with a core i5 and a GTX 670, and the system still runs rock solid. A high quality PS will cost you up front, but will last and last. This machine gets several hours of use daily. Most issues I've had with it have been software related, although my 8800 Ultra bit the dust after only three years, although given how clogged with dust it was, overheating was the obvious culprit.

I'm still using Windows 8 and I generally like it, though I admit there is no significant reason for anybody to upgrade.

It runs a little nicer...the Metro desktop is useful for some news blurbs when first booting up...it boots and shuts down faster...there are some nice minor additions to routine items (accessibility of folder options, expanded Task Manager, etc.)...etc.

But, there is no reason that you need to upgrade from Windows 7. They tried forcing a touchscreen UI when the vast majority of PCs do not have touchscreens. As Cnet put it, Windows 8 is a solution looking for a problem.

Damning the OS, the Metro desktop does not give you control over the full system or it often complicates routine items. If you wanted to, there is no way for you to run your system entirely from it - time and time again, it kicks you back to the Windows 7 desktop app. Over time, you basically teach yourself to treat the Windows 7 app as the main OS and the metro desktop as a weird, enhanced Bing search bar thingie with peculiar restrictions on sizing two (and no more) windows.

Taken to the full extent, I look at Metro on the way into and out of the Windows 7 desktop app. And that is where I spend all my other computing time; this is like Windows 7 Plus or a real Windows 7 Premium Edition. Unless you saw me boot up or shut down, barring looking for the Start menu (which there are apps for,) you would never know I wasn't running Windows 7.

Looking at Windows 8 as a whole new experience, they definitely did too little and jumped the shark on touchscreens. Even running with some of the design choices they made, there are some peculiar choices or limitations they made.

As a user, $40 got me some neat tweaks, something that works better than Windows 7, and that gives me an occasionally interesting boot screen. Nobody is hurting for not having Windows 8, but at that price level, I don't really have any regrets.It's Windows 7...with benefits.Amused by the haters; amused by Windows 8,Ray

I’ve said for months that Windows 8 is an attempt by Microsoft to purposely drive their stock into the ground so their execs can make a killing by buying back shares at a bargain just before Windows 9 is announced (I’m guessing around the same time the XBox 720 is unveiled). So far, their stock has dropped about 10% is that past 3 months, and is sure to drop further as investors realize the Win8 adoption rate is slowing… I just hope the SEC is keeping a close eye on this.

On a touch device... it might make sense... on a desktop or even a laptop, it absolutely makes no sense to a lot of us, and to not give an option to turn it off is absolutely ridiculous... which drives the venom even more.

Why do all you win 8 supporters encourage people to buy something that some folks outright don't like? You aren't going to change our minds, just as much as we aren't going to change yours. It's like you are all defensive over your purchase... and need our blessing to agree that it was a good one.

Steele Johnson wrote on Jan 2, 2013, 17:09:- Boot time and shutdown time is nearly instantaneous. While your Win7 machine is chugging along loading drivers and allocating resources during boot, I'm already in a game playing.

That's because Windows 8 doesn't "shut down." It now has hibernate as its default "off" setting. If you hibernate your Win 7 machine, it boots wakes much faster as well.

- Syncing my settings between home machine and work machine. If I make changes on one, I can enable the change on any number of my machines without having to drill through the settings all over again.

You have identical home and work machines? In any case, that seems like a cool feature.

- No more 3rd party antivirus. The new Windows Defender is built right in and doesn't bog down your machine (and actually works quite well).

Windows Defender is standard in Win 7 as well, though it's recommended to upgrade it into Security Essentials. (and it's not a great antivirus solution. It ranks in the bottom in virtually every av test.)

It's also available in Win7. According to multiple Blues users, this feature actually still sucks and in several cases simply refused to work in win8. When I tried to use it in win7, it wanted to backup my C, D and E partitions for a "windows backup."

- Native ISO support. :)

Yep, cool.

- Way better resource management. All my apps that are resource hogs run much faster under Win8. Including a lot of my games.

There are literally dozens of benchmark tests on the web that show that Win 8 is basically just as fast, or a tiny little bit faster in games. So your claim that "a lot" of your games run "much faster" is going to be taken with a huge amount of salt, I'm afraid.

Anyway, urgh. SNIP

I could go on and on. I thought I'd offer something a little positive over the average negative naysayer who's afraid of change. ;)

Or, you know, it could just be that Windows 8 offers nothing over Windows 7 that people find worth upgrading for?

- You can disable the Metro interface if you don't want to use it. I configure to boot right to the desktop. I thought I'd offer something a little positive over the average negative naysayer who's afraid of change.

It's not naysaying to point out that it's barely an improvement over Win7. You can't disable the Metro interface without third party software, it is not a feature. Keyboard shortcuts that already existed are not a feature. You making up crap about games using less resources is not a feature. Refresh is actually pretty broken if you had even bothered to try it. The boot time improvements are minimal, especially if you have an SSD. I haven't tried storage spaces but word from the NAS communities is that it isn't good.

You have not even tried half of the features mentioned there and the few genuine features are sandwiched between subjective trolls and pure horseshit like "keyboard shortcuts". 4/10

Windows 8 has a very minor list of improvements over Windows 7 in general. It makes the most sense as a consumer who doesn't have an operating system or is retiring an old machine since it's cheap (well for the next 30 days its cheap anyway). It doesn't make a lot of sense for other people and that explains quite a bit about its sales figures so far.

Of course many people don't mind incremental upgrades, look at iOS and Apple stuff in general. The problems with why Microsoft software isn't as desirable are pretty complicated but a lack of a compelling feature that sets Windows and Windows devices in a modern light is a big part of it. Microsoft needs to stop playing catch up.